Georgia Takes the Lead in Smart Criminal Justice Reform

The July 4th holiday commemorates a pivotal moment in this nation's history - the end of a long fight for independence. Unfortunately, American history also tells us that the freedom and independence earned on that day was not shared by all. Even today, with the incarcerated population over 2.25 million, this country's "tough on crime" attitude has found more ways to reduce freedom while dedicating more money to policies that restrict education, mobility, and independence.

This past Sunday, the state of Georgia took a bold step in reforming its criminal justice system. The state implemented a package of new laws establishing alternatives to incarceration for low- level, non-violent offenders. It provides $10 million for "accountability courts" - drug courts that focus on keeping defendants employed, in treatment and sober. Finally, it creates new criminal categories to make punishment match the severity of a crime. These reforms are projected to save the state $264 million over the next five years.

The changes were supported by the Georgia NAACP, in line with recommendations in the nationalNAACP's 2011 report, Misplaced Priorities: Over Incarcerate, Under Educate. The report shows how excessive spending on incarceration undermines our ability to invest in education. From 1987 - 2007, the United States' funding for higher education grew by 21 percent, while corrections funding grew by six times that amount. This nation spends billions each year to incarcerate people in prisons and jails, lock up young people in detention facilities, and keep 7.3 million people under watch on parole and probation.

Yet this colossal spending has not served to make us safer. Crime rates are still high. Drug addiction rates have persisted in most areas, while increasing in others. Most tellingly, recidivism has not decreased. Over incarceration is a waste of precious resources and a global example of misappropriation. The United States represent five percent of the world's population, but we house 25 percent of its prisoners - making us the world's number one incarcerator.

Georgia's sentencing reform package is a prime example of the potential for bipartisanship around this issue. Criminal justice reform is one of the rare issues that can bring together allies with diverse perspectives. This was on full display during the launch of Misplaced Priorities, when the NAACP stood by economically conservative leaders such as Newt Gingrich, the head of California's largest prison union CCPOA, and lawmakers from both sides of the political aisle.

Georgia's bill is part of a national movement for reform. In states around the country, legislators, community organizations, advocacy groups and experts are coming together to fix our broken criminal justice system. For example, the Pennsylvania NAACP is supporting similar efforts to implement "smart on crime" policies that will ultimately increase public safety, decrease prison populations, decrease prison spending, and free up public dollars that can more wisely be spent on education and other effective social programs.

Our nation has suffered from a bad case of misplaced priorities over the last several decades, setting too many children on the path to prison rather than to college. On this Independence Day, the NAACP will recommit to advocating for fair and effective criminal justice policies that will make all of our communities safer.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-niaz-kasravi/georgia-criminal-justice-reform_b_1651467.html

Bankrupt cities? Don't blame unions

By Harold Meyerson

July 25, 2012

The reporting and commentary on the bankruptcies of California cities over the last month haven't been journalism's finest hour. From reading the voluminous accounts of the fiscal woes of Stockton and San Bernardino, you'd think that municipal unions and feckless city officials are primarily what led these cities down the path to fiscal ruin.

But you'd be wrong. What bankrupted Stockton and San Bernardino were the most severe housing busts in the nation. What bankrupted those two cities were banks peddling subprime mortgages to poorly paid workers.

That story has been missing from most accounts of the debacle, which instead focus on the preferred narrative of the right and center-right: that of fiscal irresponsibility and overpaid public employees. "Another city sinks in pension morass," the Orange County Register editorialized. The problem common to the cities, wrote Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters, is that "elected leaders and appointed managers succumbed to hubris and political pressure, particularly from their employee unions."

Even most of the straightforward reporting has emphasized the errors of city managers and the burdens of having to pay city workers and retirees.

But that narrative is "Hamlet" without the prince. Yes, some elected and appointed officials were indifferent or insensible to their city's fiscal plight. But lots of cities have negligent public officials, and even more have police officers and firefighters with those demonized defined-benefit pensions. What sets Stockton and San Bernardino apart is a far narrower set of circumstances: They were at the epicenters of the American housing bubble and the American housing bust.

San Bernardino is a working-class town in the Inland Empire exurbs of Los Angeles, just as Stockton is a working-class town in the Central Valley exurbs of San Francisco. In the first half of the last decade, those exurbs saw a wave of home construction and sales to distinctly nonaffluent buyers, whom banks enticed through subprime mortgages. And when the bubble burst, both cities experienced a record number of foreclosures and a sharp dip in employment, particularly in construction.

How bad was the bust? Of the 372 federally designated metropolitan areas in the United States, Stockton ranks first in foreclosures, while Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario ranks third. Among the thousands of U.S. cities, San Bernardino proper ranks third in foreclosures, while Stockton ranks fifth. Ranking the May unemployment rates in those same 372 metropolitan areas, with the area with the lowest unemployment listed as No. 1, Stockton ranked 364th and San Bernardino 354th. Unemployment in the city of Stockton in May stood at 17.5%. In San Bernardino, it stood at 15.9%.

Nor were the jobs that area residents clung to anything to write home about. The largest employment cluster in the San Bernardino area is the warehouse complex in Ontario and Fontana, where goods from China are hauled from the L.A. harbor and reloaded onto other trucks that take them to the Wal-Marts, Targets and Home Depots of the Pacific Coast and the Mountain West. The only way most of the roughly 100,000 workers in these warehouses can get these jobs, however, is through temporary employment agencies, even if they've held the same job for years. They make a little more than minimum wage — if that.

Like all California municipalities, Stockton and San Bernardino depend on tax revenues — chief among them property taxes (recycled through Sacramento as a result of Proposition 13) and local sales taxes — to fund city operations. Amounts accrued from property taxes were greatly diminished by Proposition 13's passage in 1978, but in cities with new construction and rising home values, such as these two, property taxes still provided a reliable stream of revenue until the foreclosure wave hit.

At that point, property values in both cities collapsed — and property tax revenues with them.

According to Leslie Appleton-Young, the chief economist of the California Assn. of Realtors, the median home value in San Bernardino County dropped a mind-boggling 65.6% — from an average of $350,290 at the peak in 2006 to an average of $120,410 at the trough in 2009. Values haven't risen much since. The city of San Bernardino's property tax revenues have declined by one-sixth since 2007-08. And with unemployment skyrocketing at the same time, retail sales — never very robust in low-income communities — plummeted as well, dragging down San Bernardino's sales tax revenues 14%.

It's these numbers, not political chicanery or wage-and-pension rigidity, real though

they may have been, that set Stockton and San Bernardino apart and that best explain what happened to them. That means any assessment of blame for their predicaments has to expand from such usual suspects as greedy public employees to include banks that flooded these cities with subprime mortgages that were resold into the high-flying securities market. It should include the huge retail corporations that have devised supply chains that employ area residents at barely livable wages.

Conventional wisdom may blame the unions and the pols. The facts tell a different story.

Harold Meyerson is editor at large of the American Prospect and an op-ed columnist for theWashington Post.

Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times

California job market outpaces U.S.; employers add 38,300 jobs in June

By Ricardo Lopez

July 20, 2012, 10:34 a.m.

Despite weak job growth nationally, California's labor market showed a second month of strong job gains, with employers adding 38,300 jobs in June.

With the swelling in payrolls, the unemployment rate dipped to 10.7% in June, according to data released by the state's Employment Development Department.

California's gains are a marked difference from the national employment report. U.S. employers added 80,000 jobs in June, the third straight month of weak job growth.

"It’s an impressive number," said Christopher Thornberg, founding principal at Beacon Economics. "This is very surprising."

In California, several sectors added jobs, with the largest gains in trade, transportation and utilities, which added 9,400 jobs; leisure and hospitality, with 9,200 new jobs; and construction, 8,100 jobs. 

Part of the reason California is outpacing the U.S., Thornberg said, is because the state is digging itself out of a deeper hole after the state's real estate sector tanked.

But not all economists shared the same enthusiasm.

Adding 38,300 jobs "sounds like a nice number, and it is," said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at Cal State Channel Islands in Camarillo. "But I don’t think that it’s necessarily happy days out here again."

He said that although the report was positive, the state needs to post higher numbers to signal a strong recovery.

Friday's data showed job gains in seven sectors. In the last year, the state has added 279,100 jobs. Since June 2011, the jobless rate has dropped by 1.2 percentage points.

"You’re seeing broad-based hiring, and that really is good news," said Esmael Adibi, director of the A. Gary Anderson Center at Chapman University. "Of course, the problem is the unemployment, which hasn’t gone down as much."

The dip in the unemployment rate could be attributed to discouraged workers leaving the labor force or moving out of state, he said. The state's civilian labor force shrank by 36,800 in June.

Friday's report also showed revised job figures for May. The state added 45,900 jobs that month, instead of 33,900 as initially reported.

Across Southern California, several counties posted job gains. Los Angeles County added 13,300 jobs; Orange County 8,700; San Diego County 13,400 jobs. The Inland Empire, where San Bernardino has declared a fiscal crisis that is leading to bankruptcy, the county added only 200 jobs.

California's unemployment rate remains the third-highest in the country, behind only Nevada, with 11.6%, and Rhode Island at 10.9%. The national jobless rate is 8.2%.

ALSO:

Veteran SEC attorney to head agency's Los Angeles office

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United Airlines error sells Hong Kong flights cheap -- very cheap

ricardo.lopez2@latimes.com

Follow Ricardo Lopez on Twitter.

http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-cal-jobs-june-20120720,0,1679784.story

Calif. to start bringing back inmates in out-of-state prisons

July 12, 2012 | Michael Montgomery, California Watch

Tim Pearce/Flickr

With severe overcrowding easing in state lockups, California is winding down a controversial deal with the nation’s biggest private prison operator and will bring thousands of inmates housed in facilities as far away as Mississippi back to California within the next few years.

Currently, some 9,500 state inmates are serving sentences in prisons in Arizona, Mississippi and Oklahoma operated by the Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corporation of America. As part of a strategic plan announced in April, the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation will transfer those inmates back to California facilities by 2016.

The return of the first group, 600 inmates housed in Arizona, will begin “immediately,” said Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate. Another 4,000 prisoners will return to California in 2014.

Steve Owen, spokesman for the Corrections Corporation, confirmed the company agreed to modify its contract to lower the total number of California inmates housed in out-of-state facilities from 9,588 to 9,038 for this year. The contract guarantees 90 percent occupancy.

The revised contract will reduce California’s fee to the private prison group by $67 million for the current fiscal year, according to corrections spokeswoman Dana Simas. The state will save another $14 million in 2012 by cutting staff positions for the program, which is administered in Sacramento.

Related

Solitary confinement reform creates political divide

Medical probation bill would release some inmates early

California is paying the Corrections Corporation $61 to $72 per prison bed per day, making the original contract worth more than $280 million for 2012-13, according to the Legislative Analyst's Office and corrections department figures.

The group won its first contract with California in 2006 after then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in the prison system. Schwarzenegger said the action was necessary “to prevent death and harm caused by California’s severe prison overcrowding.”

The proclamation allowed officials to override a law that prohibits sending inmates outside the state without their consent. A year later, the Legislature also approved some out-of-state transfers as part of a prison construction bill. The Legislature’s authority for those transfers expired last year, but the state continues to rely on the 2006 proclamation to keep inmates in out-of-state prisons.

Moving inmates out of California against their will proved controversial. Prisoner advocacy groups said keeping inmates far away from their families could undermine their chances of leading productive lives after release. Representatives from the prison guards union complained the program was taking jobs away from Californians.

But state officials praised the Corrections Corporation for making prison beds available on short notice and helping alleviate extreme overcrowding.

The California Emergency Services Act states that the governor “shall proclaim the termination of a state of emergency at the earliest possible date that conditions warrant.” Corrections officials say that while conditions have dramatically improved, they do not know when the state of emergency will be formally lifted.

Last month, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law an overhaul of California’s penal system, which intends to cut billions in spending and comply with multiple federal court orders for improving inmate health care.

“The passage of our blueprint will show the federal courts that California is serious about ending the long-standing lawsuits overseeing much of our operations,” Cate said.

California is under a court order to reduce its prison population to 137 percent of design capacity, or about 110,000 inmates. Since California began transferring authority over some offenders to counties as part of Brown’s public safety realignment, the state inmate population has dropped by about 25,000 inmates.

However, Cate said the return of all inmates from out-of-state facilities is still dependent on the court increasing the population threshold to 145 percent of design capacity.

But even if the plan is fully implemented, it remains uncertain how much money it actually will save the state. According to department projections, “the elimination of the out-of-state contract beds will result in a reduction of $318 million General Fund and over 400 positions from the department’s budget.”

But as the Legislative Analyst's Office points out, bringing thousands of inmates back to California lockups will incur other costs, including housing and medical care.

What’s more, the analyst's office asserts there could be significant savings elsewhere if California continued to keep some inmates in out-of-state facilities. That includes canceling several prison construction projects for a savings of about $155 million annually.

http://www.californiahealthline.org/articles/2012/7/16/officials-calif-to-start-returning-inmates-from-out-of-state-prisons.aspx

Economist calls jobs report ‘encouraging’

The unemployment rates in San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties continue to be lower than a year ago, but June rates broke a recent pattern by increasing from the prior month.

Despite the jumps, a local economist said the June results were “encouraging,” adding that an increase in unemployment is common from May to June.

In San Luis Obispo County, unemployment was at 8.5 percent, down from 9.6 percent in June 2011 and up from 7.8 percent in May.

For Santa Barbara County, the unemployment rate in June was 7.9 percent, down from 8.8 percent the prior June but up from 7.4 percent a month earlier.

Preliminary unemployment figures for June were released last Friday by the Labor Market Information Division of the California Employment Development Department (EDD).

In southern San Luis Obispo County, Oceano was at 15.8-percent unemployment, Nipomo, 11.3 percent; Grover Beach, 8.3 percent; and Pismo Beach and Arroyo Grande, 8.7 percent.

Among Santa Barbara County cities, the jobless rate in Lompoc remained the highest at 13.9 percent, followed by Guadalupe at 13.5 percent. Santa Maria, the county’s biggest city, came in at 12.3 percent.

In the past 12 months, Santa Barbara County has gained 3,500 nonfarm jobs, a 2.1-percent growth rate. The rate is about even with the state as a whole, which grew by 2 percent.

The largest annual job gains have come from professional and business services — split about evenly between professional, scientific and technical services, and administrative support services.

“The June 2012 employment report ... was encouraging, as the county gained a large number of nonfarm jobs. The labor market is healthier than at the beginning of the year, and healthier than 12 months ago, indicating that the recovery continues to advance,” said Mark Schniepp, director of the Goleta-based California Economic Forecast Project.

The California Economic Forecast did not prepare a similar report for San Luis Obispo County.

Posted Friday July 27, 2012


Via http://www.theadobepress.com/articles/2012/07/27/news/news57.txt

California failing to ensure health and well being of children, when compared to other states.

California has the largest child population, but the state ranks near the bottom -- 41st in the nation -- when it comes to children's well-being, according to a report released Wednesday.

In fact, California is failing in three of four measures that gauge health and well-being, says a report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation's 2012 Kids Count Data Book, released in partnership with Children Now, an Oakland-based nonprofit advocacy group. Each state was graded according to 16 indicators of economic well-being, education, health and family and community.

California ranked 23rd in health but failed to rise above the bottom 10 in the other categories. It came in last in the percentage of household income available for living necessities other than housing, and last for heads of households with high school diplomas.
"These numbers are particularly disturbing, given over one in 10 of the nation's children lives in California," said Ted Lempert, president of Children Now. "The last couple of years have seen California children bearing the brunt of the state's budget cuts. We must hold the state's policymakers more accountable for failing to invest in children, because their poor decisions will certainly have a lasting effect on the economic and civic fabric of our state."
The Golden State earned its lowest ranking -- 45th -- in economic well being.

According to the research, more than half of California's children live in households that spend at least 30 percent of their income on housing, leaving many families struggling to pay for food, clothing and health care. Due in part to the economic recession, more than a third of parents lack secure employment, and 22 percent of children live in poverty. 


Some parents don't make enough to put food on the table, said James Wogan, who works with homeless families in the Mt. Diablo school district in Contra Costa County.

"You need to make about $18 per hour and work 40 hours a week to survive in this county," he said. "Many people are making $8 an hour and working 80 hours a week."

California ranked 42nd in education, with three-quarters of its fourth-graders not reading proficiently and three-quarters of its eighth-graders not proficient in math. To help improve these statistics, school districts such as Mt. Diablo and nonprofit organizations such as the Silicon Valley Education Foundation in Santa Clara County have partnered with outside agencies for summer programs to give students college or career skills.

The Mt. Diablo CARES program -- or Collaborative for Academics, Recreation and Enrichment for Students -- received a grant that pays high school students a stipend to work in an organic garden at Mt. Diablo High in Concord, where restaurant owner Cindy Gershen teaches students to cook healthy meals with their crops.

Tom Torlakson, state superintendent of public instruction, toured an algebra program Wednesday in San Jose that teaches students to relate what they're learning to careers in science, technology, engineering and math. The Silicon Valley Education Foundation has funded similar programs in several schools, said Muhammed Chaudhry, foundation CEO and president.

"The highest correlation between college graduation in five years and what you do in high school and middle school is algebra," he said, "so we know that investing in math is important."

If voters don't approve tax measures on the November ballot, California's education rank could drop even lower because districts may slash up to three weeks of instruction, said Terri Jackson, a sixth-grade teacher at Stewart Elementary in Pinole.

"Cutting the school year shorter doesn't help the situation," she said.

HOW STATE RANKS

Category Rank
Economic well-being 45
Education 43
Family and community 42
Health 23
Overall well-being 41

More information about the rankings, including breakdowns within California by county, Congressional districts and cities, is available at datacenter.kidscount.org/CA.

For more details about East Bay counties, read the On Assignment blog at www.ibabuzz.com/onassignment.

via Mercury News

Unsafe and Unfair: Labor Conditions in the Warehouse Industry

Newswise — RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Labor subcontracting and lack of employer accountability have fostered unsafe and unfair working conditions in the Inland warehouse industry, according to a new study released by the University of California, Riverside.

The report, written by a research team led by Associate Professor of Sociology Ellen Reese, appears in Policy Matters, a quarterly journal published by UC Riverside.

In 2010, 114,000 people were hired in warehouses in the Inland Empire, according to the California Employment Development Department. This workforce is mostly Latino, of which about half are immigrants. Temporary workers who lack benefits and are paid low wages do much of the work.
The study combines information from multiple sources and methods, including secondary literature, survey data, and ethnographic field research, including 17 semi-structured interviews with warehouse workers, warehouse managers, and representatives of temporary employment services.

Among the findings:
About 40 percent of respondents reported that pressure from management led to injury or illness. Work schedules contribute to sleep deprivation among warehouse workers, which increases the risks of workplace accidents and injuries.

Just 22 percent of these workers felt that they had received adequate training before starting the job. Some reported being left to their own devices, teaching themselves to do the job as they went along. Even without proper training, 90 percent of these workers said that they received pressure from supervisors to work faster.

Inadequate state and federal funding for Occupational Health and Safety Administration and other Department of Labor offices undermines efforts to protect worker safety, a problem that has only worsened in the recent wave of state and federal cutbacks.

“Our research strongly suggests that public policy changes and community support are needed to ensure workplace safety and fairness for warehouse workers,” Reese said. “Federal and state officials need to closely monitor working conditions in the warehouse industry and enforce protective labor laws, and retail companies must be held accountable for unfair and unsafe working conditions.”

She added that community mobilization and support for Warehouse Workers United’s campaign for better working conditions in the form of petitions, protests and boycotts can make a big difference in whether large retail stores push their contractors to improve working conditions.

Policy Matters is part of a larger initiative by UCR on public policy that includes curriculum development, seminar series, and future plans to create a school of public policy.

The research team included graduate students Elizabeth Bingle of the University of Cincinnati, and Kevin Curwin, Edwin Elias, Tony Roberts and Jason Struna of UC Riverside.

via newswise.com

Facebook, Credit Checks, Criminal Records? Where the Law Stands on Employee Background Checks

You’ve probably heard about the controversy surrounding employers asking job applicants for their Facebook user names and passwords as part of the background check process. It sounds shocking, but it happens – particularly among law enforcement entities – but even among private sector employers who feel they have a reason to go that extra step to weed out potentially undesirable employees.
Unethical as it may seem, what does the law say about this?

Led by the state of Maryland, which became the first state to ban employers from asking for social media passwords, several other state legislatures are pressing for laws that prohibit this extreme form of background check.

At the federal level there is no law prohibiting employers from soliciting social media login information. However, the Department of Justice considers it a crime to violate social media terms of service. Check out Facebook’s Terms of Service and you’ll find it stated explicitly that users consent not to share their login information, solicit login information, or access the account of another Facebook user. So employers and applicants clearly need to tread carefully.

At the end of the day, asking a job applicant for their social media login is unethical and an invasion of privacy at the very least. It also exposes employers to discrimination lawsuits if an applicant can prove that information about their religious, political or sexual views on their social media profile was used to discriminate against them. What would you do if someone asked you for yours?

Background Checks – What are Your Options?
Background checks have their place, but what are your options as a potential employer?
You can use several different types of background checks to build a profile of an employee, but the law varies on what information you can ask for, what you can do with it and when consent is required. If you run a criminal background check on an employee, for example, different states have different rules on how you can use that information. Also, if you are seeking to hire someone who will have fiscal oversight in your business, you opt for credit score check. By law, this requires the applicant’s consent.

To read more about the types of checks you can legally conduct, refer to SBA’s Guide to Employee Background Checks. In most instances, the following checks are worth considering:

• Credit checks (currently used by 60 percent of employers, but remember that you must get the applicants consent according to the Fair Credit Reporting Act)
• Drug tests
• Past employment
• Criminal background (check with your lawyer so you are compliant with state laws)
• Driving records (if the job demands this skill)

For many small businesses, this scope of testing is downright time-consuming. If you feel you need to go beyond what’s on an applicant’s resume or contained in their letters of reference, consider hiring a private screening firm. Not only will they do the legwork for you, they’ll also ensure any checks are done within the law.

The Bottom Line
The turnover costs of replacing an experienced worker who doesn’t work out can be 50 percent or more of that individual’s annual salary; more if you are seeking specialized skills, high qualifications, and experience. (Source: AARP).

Just because today’s job market is considered a buyer’s market doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing your due diligence. But do it ethically and within the law. It may save you money in the long run.
Related Resources

• Employer's Guide to Discrimination: Hiring and Managing Employees with Criminal Records
• 10 Steps to Hiring your First Employee

http://www.sba.gov/community/blogs/facebook-credit-checks-criminal-records-where-law-stands-employee-background-checks

Caron Beesley is a small business owner, a writer, and marketing communications consultant. Caron works with the SBA.gov team to promote essential government resources that help entrepreneurs and small business owners start-up, grow and succeed. Follow Caron on Twitter: @caronbeesley

 

State seeks reform of crime system

SIOUX FALLS — State leaders from all three branches of government announced Tuesday the creation of a work group to study possible ways to reform the criminal justice system in an effort to control its rising costs in South Dakota.

The state’s prison population has grown by more than 500 percent since 1980, to more than 3,600 inmates, and consumes more than $100 million a year. The work group will study sentencing and Department of Corrections policies to see if there are reforms or alternatives, such as community treatment programs, that could ease the amount of money spent each year on overall public safety, Gov. Dennis Daugaard said.

“This is not about being hard or soft on crime. This is about being smart on crime,” Daugaard said.

South Dakota’s prison rate is about double the rates of North Dakota and Minnesota. Projections show that if nothing is done, the prison population will increase by about 25 percent to 4,500 by 2022.

That would require more than $224 million in taxpayer dollars to cover capital costs for building and operating two new prisons, one for men and one for women.

The work group, which includes representatives from the state judiciary, Legislature and governor’s office, will work with the Pew Center on the States to analyze data over the next several months.

“When I was a trial judge you had two choices: either put somebody on probation or send them to the pen. In many of those instances neither option is what I would have liked to have seen,” Chief Supreme Court Justice David Gilbertson. “If you have other alternatives, such as a drug court, alcohol court, intensive probation, that are proven to work better at less tax dollars and gives the judge those sentencing tools in addition to the pen and traditional probation, why wouldn’t you go there?”

In addition to the state’s more than 3,600 prison inmates, 7,000 people are on probation and 2,400 others are on parole, some of whom end up in prison for the first time or back in prison, Daugaard said.

“We need to understand what drives probationers into prison, what brings parolees back into prison and see if there’s a means to reducing that number in prison and getting our costs under control and still keeping public safety foremost and holding offenders accountable,” the governor said.

Jim Seward, the governor’s general counsel, said the work group will study data through October. Any possible drafting of legislation will take place in late October or November and be introduced during the next legislative session. 

via mitchellrepublic.com

Texas executes its 1st inmate using single drug

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A Texas man convicted of carjacking and fatally shooting a stockbroker was put to death Wednesday, becoming the first prisoner in the nation's most active capital punishment state to be executed under a procedure using one lethal drug instead of three.

Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials announced last week they were modifying the three-drug injection method used since 1982 because the state's supply of one of the drugs — the muscle relaxant pancuronium bromide — has expired. Yokamon Hearn, 33, was executed using a single dose of the sedative pentobarbital, which had been part of the three-drug mixture since last year.

Ohio, Arizona, Idaho and Washington have already adopted a single-drug procedure, and this week Georgia said it would do so, too.

Hearn showed no apparent unusual reaction to the drug as his execution began. He was pronounced dead about 25 minutes after the lethal dose began flowing.

Asked by the warden if he wanted to make a statement, he said: "I'd like to tell my family that I love y'all and I wish y'all well. I'm ready."

Hearn was condemned for the March 1998 slaying of 23-year-old suburban Dallas stockbroker Frank Meziere. About 3½ hours before Hearn was put to death, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his appeals to halt the execution. None of the appeals addressed the change in the state's execution drug policy.

Evidence showed Meziere, of Plano, was cleaning his black convertible Mustang at a self-service car wash in Dallas when Hearn, then 19, and his friends approached. They forced Meziere at gunpoint into his own car and drove him to an industrial area in a south Dallas neighborhood, where he was shot 10 times in the head.

Meziere's father, brother and uncle were among those who witnessed Hearn's lethal injection.
"We did not come today to view this execution for revenge or to even the score," the family said afterward in a statement. "What this does is give our family and friends the knowledge that Mr. Hearn will not have the opportunity to hurt anyone else."

Hearn, known to his friends as "Yogi," already had a lengthy record that included burglary, robbery, assault, sexual assault and weapons possession.

In one appeal, Hearn's lawyers argued that his mother drank alcohol when she was pregnant, stunting his neurological development and leaving him with mental impairments that disqualify him from execution under earlier Supreme Court rulings. Testing shows Hearn's IQ is too high for him to be considered mentally impaired.

In another, his appeals lawyers claimed the trial attorneys who handled his initial appeals failed to investigate his background and uncover evidence of his alleged mental impairment and troubled childhood.

Before the Supreme Court issued brief one-paragraph rulings rejecting his two appeals, Richard Burr, one of Hearn's lawyers, had acknowledged "a degree of hope, but still, it'll be tough."

State attorneys contested the appeals, arguing that information about Hearn's background and upbringing had been "thoroughly investigated and addressed at trial" and that the evidence "does not substantiate any scenario other than that of Hearn's guilt."

Georgette Oden, an assistant Texas attorney general, argued Hearn's latest appeal was improperly filed this week by circumventing lower courts and that it should have been filed years ago.
Hearn declined to speak with reporters in the weeks leading up to his execution. In 2004, he avoided the death chamber when a federal court agreed his mental impairment claims should be reviewed and halted his execution less than an hour before its scheduled time.

Jason January, the former Dallas County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Hearn for capital murder, said to stop the punishment because of fetal alcohol syndrome "would be a free pass for anyone whose parents drank."

"No question he had a tough background, but a lot of people have tough backgrounds and work their way out and don't fill someone's head with 10 bullets," he said.

One of Hearn's accomplices received life in prison. Two others got 10-year sentences.

Hearn became the sixth Texas prisoner executed this year and the 483rd since 1982. At least eight other Texas prisoners have execution dates in the coming months, including three in August.

via SFGATE.com

San Bernardino, Calif., opens the door to bankruptcy filing

By NBC News staff and wire reports

 

The city of San Bernardino, Calif., took a giant step towards filing for bankruptcy protection from its creditors Tuesday when it declared a fiscal emergency.

The designation allows the Southern California city of about 210,000 to skip lengthy negotiations with its debt holders and go straight to filing for Chapter 9, which gives financially-stressed cities and towns protection from its creditors while it renegotiates the terms of its debt.

It's expected that San Bernardino will make its filing in 30 days at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Riverside, California, said City Attorney James Penman.

The City Council voted 5-2 to declare the emergency and file for bankruptcy protection amid a dire cash crunch that has officials worried San Bernardino can't meet payroll in August.

"The horse is out of the barn — the whole world knows we're insolvent," Councilman Fred Shorett said, according to the San Bernardino Sun. "I will be supporting going forward with Chapter 9 and fiscal emergency." 

The city, located 65 miles east of Los Angeles, could become the third municipality in California to seek protection from its creditors since late June. Stockton and the ski resort city of Mammoth Lakes have already filed in bankruptcy court. 

A fourth city, Compton on the outskirts of Los Angeles, could be the next city to turn to bankruptcy protection. 

Compton will run out of cash to make its payroll on September 1, a city official said.

San Bernardino has burned through its reserves and is out of other ways to pay for its longstanding deficit spending. It faces a deficit of nearly $46 million. 

"This problem has been coming for a long, long time," said Shorett. "It's here, now."

The extent of San Bernardino's financial problems became public suddenly last week, prompting its city council to vote on July 10 to begin the process of moving toward Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection as part of a plan to overhaul the city's finances. 

That move caught San Bernardino's residents by surprise and many have spoken out against a bankruptcy filing, fearing its stigma for the city. 

San Bernardino's employees are particularly concerned about what bankruptcy means for their pay and benefits. 

"This sets a bad example for the people of San Bernardino," said Steve Tracy, the representative for San Bernardino's firefighters union. "It shows the city can make contracts, agreements, and can renege on them by filing for bankruptcy." 

San Bernardino's financial staff expects to present a short-term budget to the council on July 24 and city administrators have been authorized to begin negotiations with the city's employee unions. 

Eyes on California
The municipal debt market, which has been keeping a close eye on California, also was caught off guard by the July 10 vote and its analysts are still trying to piece together how San Bernardino's finances fell apart without city leaders stepping in to prevent it. 

"They either didn't know, which is shameful, or they did know, which is worse," said Dick Larkin, director of credit analysis at municipal bond broker-dealer HJ Sims. 

Penman said last week that financial documents had been falsified in 13 of the past 16 years but has not made evidence of the claim public. 

A former city manager who warned the city council in mid-2010 that San Bernardino faced financial ruin, the city's mayor and its auditing firm say they are unaware of any wrongdoing.

Larkin said he expected the city council would press ahead with a Chapter 9 filing given the severity of the city's financial trouble. 

"They seemed hell bent to do it," he said. "I understand they're just about out of cash. I got the feeling that when they voted last Tuesday, they were out of options." 

A state law approved after Vallejo, California, declared bankruptcy in 2008 requires financially troubled cities to enter into talks with creditors to try to avert bankruptcy. 

But the law also allows cities to skip talks and move directly toward a bankruptcy filing by declaring a fiscal emergency and stating that they are unable to pay their obligations within 60 days. 

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

via NBCNews.com